In opposition to modernist conceptions of the “self,” some environmental philosophers argue that human identity is first and foremost wild and natural because it is a product of an ontologically independent nature. They use evolutionary theory to create and maintain a division between our wild, natural human identity and our artifactual culture. Their position is supported by a misunderstanding of both early hominid evolution and artifacts. Artifacts are not the neutral instruments of human will, but exist with us in “economies” (...) that constantly create unintended consequences. In terms of recent work in the field of philosophical anthropology, a reexamination of the evolutionary evidence suggests that our identity is not natural but completely artifactual. This artifactual identity provides us with new ways of conceptualizing our present ecological problems. (shrink)

How might the psycho-social effects of chronic skin disease, its treatments (and discontents) be figuratively expressed in writing and painting? Does the art reveal common denominators in experience and representation? If so, how do we understand the cryptic language of these expressions? By examining the works of artists with chronic skin diseases—John Updike, Elizabeth Bishop, and Zelda Fitzgerald—some common features can be noted. Chronically broken skin can fracture the ego or self-perception, resulting in a disturbed body image, which leads (...) to personality disorders and co-morbid affective disorders such as anxiety and depression. The vertiginous feeling that results can be noted in the paradoxical characters, figures, and psyches portrayed in the works of these artists. This essay will examine the more specific ways in which artists disclose and/or conceal their experiences and the particular ways in which these manifest in their works. While certain nuances exist, the common denominators give us a starting point for developing an eczema aesthetic, a code for interpreting the ways in which artists’ experiences with skin disease manifest in their works. (shrink)

As James Chapman has famously put it in National Identity and the British Historical Film, historical films are “as much about the present in which they are made as they are about [the] past in which they are set.” This article discusses Shekhar Kapur’s aesthetically ground-breaking Elizabeth and its sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age focusing on two main aspects, namely national identity issues and the representation of the enemy. Kapur’s Elizabeth films will first be placed within the (...) larger context of Elizabeth’s film and television appearances. Informed by Giroux’s critical methodology guidelines, in an attempt to “historize” the films under scrutiny and so foster “sane historical sense,” a se­miotic analysis will then be offered. Largely inspired by the tenets of Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis and Kress and Leeuwen’s visual grammar, this will draw a parallel between the verbal and visual discourses in both films. Data will finally be discussed and the contention will be made that England’s religious heritage has left indelible traces which remain latent in the English imagination, for which historical evi­dence will be presented. The article’s ultimate aim will be to provide evidence suggesting that, in the English case, religious and national discourses merged from the late 16th century onwards, clearly influ­en­cing not only the perception that the English had of themselves but also and crucially the image they may still have of “Other” nations. (shrink)

Victorian poets Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861) and Robert Browning (1812-1889) first fell in love through letters, which they began to write to each other in 1845 (Figures 1 and 2). Their growing relationship, slowly progressing from letter to first encounter and eventual secret marriage in 1846, is documented in two volumes of letters, with a plot that unfolds as warmly and compellingly as the best page-turner invented by a novelist. Both were master wordsmiths, so the beauty of their letters is (...) no surprise. But one reason Barrett Browning was such a prolific correspondent is that she spent much of her life housebound, due to an illness whose nature was never truly explained when she was alive and that has been .. (shrink)

One of the most important philosophers of recent times, Elizabeth Anscombe wrote books and articles on a wide range of topics, including the ground-breaking monograph Intention. Her work is original, challenging, often difficult, always insightful; but it has frequently been misunderstood, and its overall significance is still not fully appreciated. This book is the first major study of Anscombe's philosophical oeuvre. In it, Roger Teichmann presents Anscombe's main ideas, bringing out their interconnections, elaborating and discussing their implications, pointing out (...) objections and difficulties, and aiming to give a unified overview of her philosophy. Many of Anscombe's arguments are relevant to contemporary debates, as Teichmann shows, and on a number of topics what Anscombe has to say constitutes a powerful alternative to dominant or popular views. Among the writings discussed are Intention, "Practical Inference," "Modern Moral Philosophy," "Rules, Rights and Promises," "On Brute Facts," "The First Person," "The Intentionality of Sensation," "Causality and Determination," An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, "The Question of Linguistic Idealism," and a number of other pieces, including some that are little known or hard to obtain. A complete bibliography of Anscombe's writings is also included. Ranging from the philosophy of action, through ethics, to philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and the philosophy of logic and language, this book is a study of one of the most significant bodies of work in modern philosophy, spanning more than fifty years, and as pertinent today as ever. (shrink)

Cornell realists claim, among other things, that moral knowledge can be acquired in the same basic way that scientific knowledge is acquired. Recently in this journal Elizabeth Tropman has presented two arguments against this claim. In the present article, I attempt to show that the first argument attacks a straw man and the second mischaracterizes the Cornell realists' epistemology and ends up begging the question. I close by suggesting that, given Tropman's own apparent views, her objections are also probably (...) misplaced. (shrink)

: Elizabeth Spelman has famously argued against gender realism. By and large, feminist philosophers have embraced Spelman's arguments and deemed gender realist positions counterproductive. To the contrary, Mikkola shows that Spelman's arguments do not in actual fact give good reason to reject gender realism in general. She then suggests a way to understand gender realism that does not have the adverse consequences feminist philosophers commonly think gender realist positions have.

What is the proper role of politics in higher education? Many policies and reforms in the academy, from affirmative action and a multicultural curriculum to racial and sexual harassment codes and movements to change pedagogical styles, seek justice for oppressed groups in society. They understand justice to require a comprehensive equality of membership: individuals belonging to different groups should have equal access to educational opportunities; their interests and cultures should be taken equally seriously as worthy subjects of study, their persons (...) treated with equal respect and concern in communicative interaction. Conservative critics of these egalitarian movements represent them as dangerous political meddling into the disinterested pursuit of knowledge. They cast the pursuit of equality as a threat to freedom of speech and academic standards. In response, some radical advocates of such programs agree that the quest for equality clashes with free speech, but view this as an argument for sacrificing freedom of speech. (shrink)

Theodore Roszak's compelling parable, The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein, provides an (eco)-feminist view of the “Night of the Living Dead Model” and suggests that only the equal union of “masculine” and “feminine” energies will help us resolve the current eco-crisis. This article further explores the consequences of the highly masculinized post-Enlightenment rationalism as demonstrated in Roszak's novel. Although this article agrees that there is a dangerous imbalance between natural/spiritual and scientific/rational viewpoints, it also stresses that the extreme genderification of (...) these energies is potentially problematic. (shrink)

Extracts This article introduces an issue of Christian bioethics which examines the significance of Elizabeth Anscombe's classic article, “Modern Moral Philosophy”, on the 50th anniversary of its publication. The manifold influences of this article are explored in some detail and the current status of the three famous theses put forward by Anscombe in the article is assessed. This article also briefly introduces the other articles in this issue and loactes them within the general framework of contemporary discussions of Anscombe's (...) work. (shrink)

Elizabeth Anscombe is among the most distinguished and original philosophers alive today. Her work has ranged over many areas of philosophy, including metaphysics, ethics, the philosophy of mind and action, and the philosophy of religion. In each of these areas she has made seminal contributions. The essays in this book reflect the breadth of her interests and the esteem in which she is held by her colleagues. The distinguished contributors include Michael Dunnett, Nancy Cartwright, Peter Geach and Philippa Foot; (...) and Professor Anscombe's essay 'Making True' is published here for the first time. (shrink)

(1999). Princess Elizabeth and Descartes: The union of soul and body and the practice of philosophy. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 503-520. doi: 10.1080/09608789908571042.

This essay assesses the value of social constructivist theories of science to the history of medicine. It highlights particularly the ways in which feminist theorists have turned their attention to gender as a category of analysis in scientific thinking, producing an approach to modern science that asks how it became identified with "male" objectivity, reason, and mind, set in opposition to "female" subjectivity, feeling, and nature.In the history of medicine this new work has allowed a group of scholars to better (...) explain not only how women were marginalized in the profession but also the manner in which politics, male anxiety about shifts in power relations between the sexes, social and political upheaval, professional concerns, and changes in the family all had an impact on the production of knowledge regarding the female body, including the "discovery," definition, and treatment of a wide range of female ailments, from anorexia nervosa to fibroid tumors.Building on the work in the history of medicine already accomplished, the essay offers a critical rereading of the writings of Elizabeth Blackwell, a pioneer nineteenth-century woman physician and leader of the woman's medical movement. It contends that Blackwell, who lived through a revolutionary change in medical thinking brought on by discoveries in immunology and bacteriology, remained critical of "objectivity" as the "best" form of knowing and suspicious of the laboratory medicine that promoted it so enthusiastically. Moreover, her critiques of radical objectivity and scientific reductionism deserve to be recognized as foreshadowing the maternalist strain of thinking among contemporary feminist philosophers and thinkers such as Sara Ruddick and others. (shrink)

Hume was accused of partiality as soon as the first volume of his Histories reached the public. No better test can be found for whether he was partial than by looking at how he writes of Queen Elizabeth I. If his history is biased, we would expect her sex to make a difference to the history. We shall find, however, that Hume treats Elizabeth as a rational being who is a sovereign, and that he achieves, insofar as he (...) describes her reign, the general point of view appropriate to the impartiality demanded of historians. We shall also find evidence that he did not give up on his grand project to provide the foundations for ?a compleat system of the sciences? after the Treatise failed to excite a murmur. His Histories , using the method of causal analysis common to all his works, illustrate not only his moral theory but also, for instance, his claim that we can find laws in political systems as certain as those of physics. (shrink)

Elizabeth Corey suggests that in order to understand Michael Oakeshott's worldview one should pay special attention to two subjects, religion and aesthetics, and analyze the connection between these two realms and the idea of practical life in general and of politics in particular. Her book provides a sympathetic but also critical conversation with Oakeshott's ideas, ultimately offering us a coherent picture of the place of the religious, poetical, and political in the totality of his thought. Corey persuasively shows that (...) the major ideas of the mature Oakeshott originated in his earlier religious convictions and that his philosophy of aesthetics, contrary to what his critics claimed, fit nicely in the general framework of his thought. (shrink)

Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Ph.D., is a leader in the area of telomere and telomerase research—in fact, in 1984 she codiscovered the ribonucleoprotein enzyme telomerase, opening up new potentials in cancer research and therapy. This and subsequent work has earned her numerous honors, not the least of which are the National Academy of Science Award in Molecular Biology, an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Yale University, the American Cancer Society Medal of Honor, and many more awards. Dr. Blackburn is a (...) Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society of London, the American Academy of Microbiology, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and is a Member of the Institute of Medicine. (shrink)

Writing within and against the set critical practices of psychoanalytic-deconstructive-Foucauldian-feminist cultural theory, Elizabeth Wilson demonstrates, in this provocative and original book, the productivity and the pleasure of direct, complicitous engagement with the contemporary cognitive sciences. Wilson forges an eclectic method in reaction to the 'zealous but disavowed moralism' of those high cultural Theorists whose 'disciplining compulsion' concocts a monolithic picture of science in order to keep their 'sanitizing critical practice' untainted by its sinister reductionism. Her unsettling accounts of texts (...) by, for example, Karl Popper, Judith Butler, Derrida, Turing, Ebbinghaus and Freud will send many readers back to the sources. It is no surprise that such a broad and ambitious project leaves many threads loose, and no criticism at all that it succeeds more in hinting at the promise of a new connectionist politics than in offering up such a hybrid fully-formed. (shrink)

Writing within and against the set critical practices of psychoanalytic-deconstructive-Foucauldian-feminist cultural theory, Elizabeth Wilson demonstrates, in this provocative and original book, the productivity and the pleasure of direct, complicitous engagement with the contemporary cognitive sciences. Wilson forges an eclectic method in reaction to the 'zealous but disavowed moralism' of those high cultural Theorists whose 'disciplining compulsion' concocts a monolithic picture of science in order to keep their 'sanitizing critical practice' untainted by its sinister reductionism. Her unsettling accounts of texts (...) by, for example, Karl Popper, Judith Butler, Derrida, Turing, Ebbinghaus and Freud will send many readers back to the sources. It is no surprise that such a broad and ambitious project leaves many threads loose, and no criticism at all that it succeeds more in hinting at the promise of a new connectionist politics than in offering up such a hybrid fully-formed. (shrink)

I much appreciated Elizabeth Schier's paper on Frank Jackson's knowledge argument, published in the January 2008 issue of Journal of Consciousness Studies (Schier, 2008) -- in part, I confess, because of resonances with my gestalt argument for free will (Hodgson, 2001; 2002; 2005; 2007a,b). I would like to offer two comments on this paper.

In his article ‘Saints and Heroes’, Urmson argues that traditional moral theories allow at most for a threefold classification of actions in terms of their worth, and that they are therefore unsatisfactory. Since the conclusion of his argument has led to the widespread use of the term ‘acts of supererogation’, and since I do not believe that such acts exist, I propose to argue that the actions with which he is concerned not only can, but should, be contained within the (...) traditional classification. (shrink)

This paper is a philosophical reconstruction of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's thinking about women and feminism, and an inquiry into whether there is a conservative form of feminism. The paper argues that Fox-Genovese's endorsement of conventional social forms (like traditional marriage, motherhood, and sexual morality) contrasts strongly with feminism's criticism of these forms, and feminism's claim that they should be transformed. The paper concludes, however, that one need not call Fox-Genovese's thought "feminist" to recognize it as serious advocacy on behalf of (...) women and to include it in discussions about what is good for women. (shrink)

This lecture presents the text of the speech about Elizabeth I Queen of England delivered by the author at the 2008 Raleigh Lecture on History held at the British Academy. It explores the religious movement called the Family of Love and discusses Sir Walter Raleigh's knowledge about the discourse on Dover Harbour, which was later spuriously attributed to him. The lecture provides an excerpt and interpretation of Queen Elizabeth's poem titled On Monsieur's Departure.

A common justification for retributive views of punishment is the idea that injustice is intolerable and must be answered. For instance F. H. Bradley writes: Why … do I merit punishment? It is because I have been guilty. I have done ‘wrong’… Now the plain man may not know what he means by ‘wrong’, but he is sure that, whatever it is, it ‘ought’ not to exist, that it calls and cries for obliteration; that, if he can remove it, it (...) rests also upon him, and that the destruction of guilt, whatever be the consequences, and even if there be no consequences at all, is still a good in itself; and this, not because a mere negation is a good, but because the denial of wrong is the assertion of right. A wrong is something that ought not to exist and calls to be obliterated. If anyone is able to remove it, he is obligated to do so or the wrong will also be partly his. To deny or obliterate a wrong is to assert right, Bradley says—as if the two things were counterpoised, one able to cancel the other. It reminds us of the balance held by the figure of Justice, and of debts and credits in accounts. Paying a debt erases it; the debt no longer exists. In a similar way punishment is supposed to erase wrong. (shrink)

The Estrogen Elixir: A History of Hormone Replacement Therapy in America by Elizabeth Siegel Watkins is a thoroughly documented cautionary tale of the information and advice offered to women in the perimenopausal period of their life, and the consequences of exposure to sexual hormones on their health and wellbeing.

This paper explores the way that Elizabeth Presa's artworks respond to Jacques Derrida's thought. By examining how the particularity (the beside) and its supplements (the besides) operate in Presa's works, it is shown how this movement between beside and besides is also central to Derrida's thought.

To contribute to contemporary debates about the human self, historical constitutedness and capacity for critical agency, I turn to Niccolo Machiavelli's account of human virtuosity. There I retrieve a vision of political action that centres on a critically conscious intelligence or 'I' engaged in the continual fracturing and manipulation of identity. Machiavelli shows this critical intelligence to be something developed by way of a mental standpoint I call critical in-betweenness -- a disposition that imperfectly enables positive political innovation. To account (...) for what proves to be a non-modernist Machiavellian view of a multiplicitous and capacious self, I turn to one of Machiavelli's ancient influences, Cicero, and his theory of four personae. I then further illuminate such virtuoso capacities for political innovation by way of a case study, Elizabeth Tudor of England. Finally, I briefly link this discussion to late/post-modern political and social theory, and to issues of democratic citizenship and education. (shrink)

Psychology's fascination with memory and its imperfections dates back further than we can remember. The first careful experimental studies of memory were published in 1885 by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, and tens of thousands of memory studies have been conducted since. What has been learned, and what might the future of memory be?

Although the theme of these papers is ‘Contemporary Moral Problems’ my paper is partly about Aristotelian ideas. I had originally intended to apologize for this, but I find there is no need: many other contributors have found Aristotle to be timelessly relevant, as I myself have.

This memorial tribute reflects on the personal and intellectual qualities of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese (1941–2007), who was the author's teacher. Higginbotham says that her first impressions of Fox-Genovese, formed in a graduate seminar in European history at the University of Rochester in the mid-1970s, have been lasting impressions. The seminar introduced patterns of thought and behavior that proved consistent over the years, despite Fox-Genovese's several shifts in the past three decades—from Marxist to non-Marxist, historian of France to historian of antebellum (...) Southern women, feminist to nonfeminist, and religious agnostic to devout Catholic. Higginbotham discusses political theorist C. B. McPherson's idea of “possessive individualism” and its influence on Fox-Genovese's steadfast belief that individual rights derive from society (rather than innate nature) and that the concept of individualism maintains a contradictory and fraught relationship between individual and community. Her analysis and political positions often distanced her from her colleagues. But in this meditation on a brilliant mind and complex life, Higginbotham observes that Fox-Genovese never abandoned the tendency to speak openly and candidly, and thus to present herself vulnerable to the criticism of onlookers. (shrink)

Dr Hillel Steiner in this reply to Elizabeth Telfer takes each of her arguments for different arrangements of a health service and examines them--'four positions which can be located on a linear ideological spectrum'--and adds a fifth which could have the effect of 'turning the alleged linear spectrum into a circle'. Underlying both Elizabeth Telfer's article and Dr Steiner's reply, the base is inescapably a 'political' one, but cannot be abandoned in favour of purely philosophical concepts. Whatever the (...) attitude of mind of the reader of these two papers to the provision of a health service, the stimulus to more careful assessments of our own National Health Service and its problems can only be good. (shrink)

Summary Both Maria Edgeworth and Elizabeth Hamilton drew extensively on Scottish moral philosophy, and especially on the work of Dugald Stewart, in constructing educational programmes that rested on the assumption that women, and especially mothers, were intellectually capable of understanding the importance of the early association of ideas in the training of children's emotions and reasoning powers. As liberals they found in Stewart's work routes toward intellectual and social progress?both for women and for their society as a whole?that stopped (...) short of radical politics and preserved moral certainties compatible with Christian faith. Both were assailed by Evangelical critics; Edgeworth acquired an undeserved reputation for infidelity, but Hamilton resolutely defended her committed but nonsectarian Christian faith, as she broadened her ambitions towards making her own contribution to the philosophy of mind, which she argued was relevant to the education of all classes in a modernising society. (shrink)